


For the Night Has Been Unkind

by Thistlerose



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 16:12:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5672149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even though she has a home and a family now, Rey still has nightmares about being left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Night Has Been Unkind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for igrockspock's [Star Wars Fic Fest](http://igrockspock.livejournal.com/365678.html)

Rey still has nightmares about being left behind. Even though she has a home and a family now, they're not always _there_ in her dreams. In a blink, she's five years old again, standing on the scorching sands of Jakku, the impossibly bright sun baking her shoulders and bare head, while the shuttle carrying the only father she's ever known disappears and disappears into a blinding blue sky. "Come back, come back!" she screams until her raw throat closes up. She reaches out with everything she has, with the Force, but she's only five years old, and it's not enough.

It's never enough to bring the shuttle back.

He isn't coming back.

And sometimes she's on the Starkiller Base, where everything is cold metal, and she's looking down from a great height while Han Solo falls farther and farther, and it doesn't even occur to her to use the Force to bring him back. It's too late. He's dead. He's gone.

He's never coming back.

She used to wake up trembling (not crying; she hasn't cried in her sleep since her first lonely years on Jakku). Slowly, quietly, so as not to disturb her bunkmate, she would untangle herself from the blankets and slip away to be alone. It wasn't what she needed; she knew that, and she always felt a small twinge of guilt. But it was the only way she knew how to be.

She would slip out of whatever ship or base they happened to be holed up in and walk a little ways under moonlight or streetlights or thickly tangled branches. Never too far, and not because she was frightened and not because she wouldn't be able to find her way back, but because

(she wouldn't admit it for the longest time, but it's the same reason she scratched lines on her bedroom wall every day she was on Jakku)

someone might notice she was gone and come looking. 

But that was in the beginning, when she was new to the Resistance: before it became her home, her family; when this strange bond she shares with Finn still seemed fragile (not because she doubted his feelings for her but because people she cared for always went away). Before she fully trusted her link with the Force. 

It's different now.

Leia found her first. Not on purpose - at least, Rey doesn't think so. Though the General isn't a Jedi, she has a strong link with the Force and can usually sense when one of her Resistance fighters is in distress. But that night on Aleen, Leia herself was preoccupied, restless, and out for a walk. Rey thinks that they sensed each other at the same time. She considered hiding - it was instinctive, and they were in a desert, albeit one with rock formations the likes of which she'd never seen on Jakku - but then Leia stopped moving and simply stood there, still and quiet among the rocks, which looked like the bones of ancient monsters in the moonlight. So Rey stayed where she was, still and quiet as well, and as the minutes passed they were simply aware of each other, and their shared loss.

_I miss him too._ Leia's words came to Rey after a time, gentle and honest.

_I hardly knew him._

_I know._ And there was so much understanding in her tone, so much regret, that Rey couldn't help it; she unclenched her limbs and all but fell out of the shadows, into the light.

"C'mon, let's get out of this night air," said Leia, holding out her arms, just like she had on D'Qar when they first met. And, just as she had then, Rey went to her without a word.

 

Poe found her next. He had nightmares too (Rey learned this from Finn shortly after she returned to the Resistance) and one night on Mirial they bumped into each other amid a stand of trees by the shore of a small lake. He was more startled than she was, and he tried to compose himself, dragging his fingers through his messy hair and quirking his lips in an approximation of his usual smile. But Rey wasn't fooled; she felt the tumult in his unguarded mind, caught flashes of the memories that still haunted him: stormtoopers sacking Tuanul, being tortured by the First Order, Kylo Ren in his head…

She winced in sympathy. Before, her instinct had been to hide, but this time she found herself walking slowly toward him, her hands hanging unthreateningly at her sides. Drawing on the calm, almost hypnotic ripples of the water and the flutter of leaves overhead, she sent peaceful, healing thoughts his way. By the time they were standing a foot apart, the wildness had left his eyes. 

"Couldn't sleep, either?" he said, and she shook her head. "I used to have trouble sleeping, the first few times I visited a new planet. You get used to it, trust me. Want to get something to eat? I swear I saw _real_ bread in the galley a few hours ago. It might still be there."

_I don't want to be alone._ He didn't need to say it out loud. 

"Sure." Rey smiled. And when he offered her his arm, she took it.

 

Ribbons of fine mist hung like webbing about the crumbling pillars on Dalanar's second moon, which was where Finn finally found her. By then they'd grown very close indeed, so maybe it shouldn't have been such a surprise to turn and see him jogging toward her through the mist, a worried look in his eyes. But she'd been chased from sleep by dreams of falling farther and farther through ice and fire, while Kylo Ren stood above her and

Han died

and Finn died

and her father left her on Jakku, and none of them came back because nobody ever came back.

How did Finn even know to come looking for her? She almost couldn't think until he was right in front of her, and his arms were around her, awkwardly protective. And she knew that it was the Force that had roused him from his own dreams and sent him running after her. (Or maybe, a part of her thought in wonder, it was just _Finn_.) And as she hugged him back, her face buried in his shoulder she remembered that this was actually the second time he had come looking for her. 

Finn came to find her.

Finn came back.

So she smiled when he cupped her face. She covered his hands with her own and, closing her eyes, raised her lips to his. Every movement was slow, deliberate, but somehow she startled him. He gasped, then he choked on a laugh and kissed her back, his fingers moving over her face. The mist clung to her cheeks like tears, but she wasn't crying. Neither was Finn - or, at least, she didn't think so.

 

It's different now. It's better. Oh, they're still fighting the First Order, Kylo Ren is still out there, and Rey still has nightmares about being left behind; even when she's tucked in the warm safety of Finn's arms, with the rest of her new family only a shout away (and always in her mind, thanks to her link with the Force) it's not always enough to keep them at bay. People leave, people fall. But when she opens her eyes, Finn is there. Sometimes he's awake too, gently smoothing back the hair that clings to her brow.

_I'm here, I'm here. I won't leave._ He doesn't need to say it out loud.

And sometimes she manages not to wake him. On those rare occasions, she simply snuggles deeper into his arms and, hugging him to her, sinks into the rhythm of his heartbeat, of his steady breathing - calming as ripples on a lake.

And it's enough.

1/7/2016


End file.
